3 ms·

Please excuse me for my semi-rant. I don't mean to be too critical, but I think framing every news about China in this "the West vs China" angle is really count

by cd_2001 6y ago

Please excuse me for my semi-rant. I don't mean to be too critical, but I think framing every news about China in this "the West vs China" angle is really counterproductive. First of all, "the West" is a very vague concept, quite unlike talking about China. Does it include all of Europe? Does it include Moscow then? Does it include parts of Latinamerica? Maybe you mean NATO (but then you should include Turkey too). Or maybe you only mean Five Eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, United States). This isn't just nitpicking: your point might make sense if you mean Five Eyes, but it might not make sense at all if you include, say, Greece , Turkey and Israel. Second, talking only about "the West" vs China marginalizes the rest of the world. Most of the people in this world live in neither the West nor in China and yet they never seem to matter according to most discussions I see here in Hacker News (I, for one, identify with neither). This is specially bad when people implicitly say things like "the West values freedom and democracy, whereas China...". If democracy and human rights were something unique for "the West", then you shouldn't be surprised that China doesn't like those concepts (in fact, they oppose liberal value precisely because of this: "this only works in 西方, not here in China"). 西方 = the West

tomp 6y ago
Freedom, rational thought, free speech, democracy, rule of law etc. aren't "Western" values, they're "Enlightenment" values. After the "West" adopted them, it (the countries, and the people) enjoyed unprecedented improvement in living standards, a scientific boom and so on. China is free to adopt those values anytime. In the meantime, I (and looks like many other Westerns) will be working towards ensuring that non-Enlightenment values don't creep back up into the West (from China, the Islamic world, Russia, etc. - not limited to what I wrote above but also things like corporal punishment, women's rights, separation of church and state, ...) - that would be a regression from our point of view.
- chucknthem 6y ago
  The majority of Chinese people have seen an unprecedented improvement in living standards over the past 3 decades, with scientific and engineering breakthroughs to boot. Hard to see them adopt western values from their perspective, they're doing fine without it.
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    > The majority of Chinese people It's the majority's treatment of the minority that concerns me.
    - kjjw 6y ago
      Get over yourselves. From an outside perspective I am concerned about the US’s treatment of its own minorities. Have you heard how Trump talks about minorities?! Sorry but no, from where I stand I don’t see any difference on this between China and the US. And before anyone says anything about detention centres, I’m sorry but you can’t have a prison populations in the millions made up mostly of minority people and point fingers there.
  - bordercases 6y ago
    You mean – with how they want to consume like Americans (where mainly your coastal city populations benefit, not your inner provinces), they get education from Americans when they go abroad for university, they transfer trade secrets from American labs, and the way 海外华人 got recalled after accumulating wealth in other countries, including America? No dice buddy.
- fakeslimshady 6y ago
  rational thought, free speech, democracy, rule of law . Trumps administration has pushed the US backwards on all these fronts and has nothting to do with those other countries
  - bordercases 6y ago
    As long as we're playing this game then Winnie the Pooh loves genocide against Muslims, thus so must you.
    - fakeslimshady 6y ago
      The US killed millions in last 2 wars. Acutal deaths. China is accused of what ? actual re-education. Both in reaction to terror attacks. Keep in mind we are mostly reading the propaganda. Look at actual videos of people going to Xinjiang avail tells different story. Who am I kidding you are a racist claiming to support muslims , give me a break
  - tomp 6y ago
    Trump's administration has been pretty powerless to affect any meaningful change, and faces plenty of very vocal opposition on all fronts (public, legislative, courts, ...).
- nostrademons 6y ago
  Interesting that you mention the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment started with the depopulation of Black Death, the Great Famine, and the subsequent 3 centuries of warfare (Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, Wars of Religion, etc). Europe lost roughly 60% of its population. As a result, the survivors could bargain for higher wages, which led to a power shift from the entrenched landed aristocracy to the newly emerging merchant and guild classes. (Cynically, once the lords could no longer use peasant labor to quell any challenges to their power, they lost that power to a more egalitarian middle class.) Additionally, the survivors were overwhelmingly former members of the aristocracy - the new merchant classes were largely made up of the younger sons of noble families who previously would've been shut out of an inheritance by primogeniture. They were often educated the same way as their older brothers, but lacked control over resources in the feudal system. As the feudal system collapsed, they spread the values of the nobility into the rest of society. We got egalitarian values because everybody's ancestor used to be a lord, and most of the peasants died off. There are some pretty obvious parallels to the current situation. It's very common for pandemics to lead to the collapse of current political organization.
bordercases 6y ago
The West isn't vague. It is only semi-vague because, due to globalization, most cultures around the world have adopted Western norms of consumption, including China. Politically the West is Five Eyes with support of NATO. If push came to shove these would be the nations called upon to support a global conflict with China. Furthermore the hegemonic rule of the United States is a direct substitute to that of China. For every nation that China wants to exclude, overwhelm or subvert in its economic plans, the US will have an enemy or potential enemy of an enemy to ally with. Conversely if the US is separating economic ties with certain countries but building ties with others, it's this coalition that will operate against China as we move to our multi-polar world. There is a legacy of intellectual culture between Russia, the Mediterranean, and some of the Middle East with Western Europe – mainly due to Aristotle and his influence on the intellectual practice of all of the Abrahamic religions – but a lot of that complexity is screened off by the real military commitments extant between the nations in these geographic regions. Post WWII history is what scoped out the structure of the modern world, so post WWII history is what makes sense to use in our analysis of what the West will be in practice. As a proxy, English and the Romantic Languages as primary languages within a nation could be a decent heuristic of the what the West is culturally.

tomp 6y ago

Freedom, rational thought, free speech, democracy, rule of law etc. aren't "Western" values, they're "Enlightenment" values. After the "West" adopted them, it (the countries, and the people) enjoyed unprecedented improvement in living standards, a scientific boom and so on. China is free to adopt those values anytime. In the meantime, I (and looks like many other Westerns) will be working towards ensuring that non-Enlightenment values don't creep back up into the West (from China, the Islamic world, Russia, etc. - not limited to what I wrote above but also things like corporal punishment, women's rights, separation of church and state, ...) - that would be a regression from our point of view.

chucknthem 6y ago
The majority of Chinese people have seen an unprecedented improvement in living standards over the past 3 decades, with scientific and engineering breakthroughs to boot. Hard to see them adopt western values from their perspective, they're doing fine without it.
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  > The majority of Chinese people It's the majority's treatment of the minority that concerns me.
  - kjjw 6y ago
    Get over yourselves. From an outside perspective I am concerned about the US’s treatment of its own minorities. Have you heard how Trump talks about minorities?! Sorry but no, from where I stand I don’t see any difference on this between China and the US. And before anyone says anything about detention centres, I’m sorry but you can’t have a prison populations in the millions made up mostly of minority people and point fingers there.
- bordercases 6y ago
  You mean – with how they want to consume like Americans (where mainly your coastal city populations benefit, not your inner provinces), they get education from Americans when they go abroad for university, they transfer trade secrets from American labs, and the way 海外华人 got recalled after accumulating wealth in other countries, including America? No dice buddy.
fakeslimshady 6y ago
rational thought, free speech, democracy, rule of law . Trumps administration has pushed the US backwards on all these fronts and has nothting to do with those other countries
- bordercases 6y ago
  As long as we're playing this game then Winnie the Pooh loves genocide against Muslims, thus so must you.
  - fakeslimshady 6y ago
    The US killed millions in last 2 wars. Acutal deaths. China is accused of what ? actual re-education. Both in reaction to terror attacks. Keep in mind we are mostly reading the propaganda. Look at actual videos of people going to Xinjiang avail tells different story. Who am I kidding you are a racist claiming to support muslims , give me a break
- tomp 6y ago
  Trump's administration has been pretty powerless to affect any meaningful change, and faces plenty of very vocal opposition on all fronts (public, legislative, courts, ...).
nostrademons 6y ago
Interesting that you mention the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment started with the depopulation of Black Death, the Great Famine, and the subsequent 3 centuries of warfare (Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, Wars of Religion, etc). Europe lost roughly 60% of its population. As a result, the survivors could bargain for higher wages, which led to a power shift from the entrenched landed aristocracy to the newly emerging merchant and guild classes. (Cynically, once the lords could no longer use peasant labor to quell any challenges to their power, they lost that power to a more egalitarian middle class.) Additionally, the survivors were overwhelmingly former members of the aristocracy - the new merchant classes were largely made up of the younger sons of noble families who previously would've been shut out of an inheritance by primogeniture. They were often educated the same way as their older brothers, but lacked control over resources in the feudal system. As the feudal system collapsed, they spread the values of the nobility into the rest of society. We got egalitarian values because everybody's ancestor used to be a lord, and most of the peasants died off. There are some pretty obvious parallels to the current situation. It's very common for pandemics to lead to the collapse of current political organization.

bordercases 6y ago

The West isn't vague. It is only semi-vague because, due to globalization, most cultures around the world have adopted Western norms of consumption, including China. Politically the West is Five Eyes with support of NATO. If push came to shove these would be the nations called upon to support a global conflict with China. Furthermore the hegemonic rule of the United States is a direct substitute to that of China. For every nation that China wants to exclude, overwhelm or subvert in its economic plans, the US will have an enemy or potential enemy of an enemy to ally with. Conversely if the US is separating economic ties with certain countries but building ties with others, it's this coalition that will operate against China as we move to our multi-polar world. There is a legacy of intellectual culture between Russia, the Mediterranean, and some of the Middle East with Western Europe – mainly due to Aristotle and his influence on the intellectual practice of all of the Abrahamic religions – but a lot of that complexity is screened off by the real military commitments extant between the nations in these geographic regions. Post WWII history is what scoped out the structure of the modern world, so post WWII history is what makes sense to use in our analysis of what the West will be in practice. As a proxy, English and the Romantic Languages as primary languages within a nation could be a decent heuristic of the what the West is culturally.